Putting garrisons in a mobile app would be cool, but isn't planned right now.

There is no way to invite other players to your garrison when offline. You can invite a whole 40 player raid when you are online though!

The Dark Iron will make a small appearance in WoD.

There aren't any major changes planned for the pet battle system, just additions of new pets, trainers, and buildings in your garrison.

After the new character models are all done, the team will look at adding more customizations to character models.

Wrathion played an important role in Pandaria, but won't make more than a short appearance in WoD.

Smart healing has a place, but it might be good to make them less smart. Most heals could just prefer people who are injured rather than at full health, rather than just picking the people at the lowest health.

The team wants to make it easier to find like minded players to play with, which is why we have advance notice on the raid size change.

Mythic would have taken more resources to maintain the 10 and 25 structures for the top 1% of players, so the decision to fix the size at 20 was made in order to focus more on raid design and less on balancing two sizes.

The tertiary stats may be limited to a certain slot, like speed only on boots. It will be rare enough that by the time you can farm them progression races will be over. They shouldn't have a big impact on progression races.

Heroic Warforged gear will still exist going forward.

WoD will have a legendary questline that is similar to the cape this time, but also another legendary that is more exclusive.

Garrisons are unique per character, so there will be some kind of way to make it faster for alts.

The Titans visited Draenor, but aren't around anymore, so we will only see a little bit more of the Titans in this expansion.

Having Best in Slot items currently feels like a checklist right now. In WoD you will get your loot, but you will also have a cooler version of the loot to go after when things are on farm.

Racial balance will be tuned again in WoD, trying to narrow the gap. Goblin and Worgen have better balanced racials than many other races right now.

20 players will likely have ~5 healers in Mythic difficulty. Keeping mythic at a fixed size will allow for many more possibilities in making mechanics that don't have to scale to another raid size.

Adding dynamic content to the old world would be nice, but it isn't a good use of time right now.

Eyes of the Beast was removed when trying to prune things from classes and the code for it got removed as well. Removing it was a mistake, but it would take some time to add support for it again.

The Horde will have a chance to go back and redefine itself, and come away from the end of Mists of Pandaria even stronger.

World PvP outside of the World PvP zone isn't going to be a huge focus, especially with how one sided most PvP realms are.

New hairstyles are coming with the new character models.

Transmog that doesn't require you to keep the item forever is on the list, but won't be ready for WoD launch.

The team is talking about scaling up the difficulty of the launch dungeons with each new tier of dungeons during the expansion so you don't have to run the two new ones over and over and get burnt out.

There are plans for Alleria and Turalyon, but not in WoD.

The panel ended 5 minutes early, but the Q&A points above are complete.

Account binding of items and PS4 Trading become the easiest and fastest way to get items and we wanted to change that. We still see value in trading and want to keep it in the game, but we still haven't finalized it. Maybe the top tier of Legendaries will become account bound and also high level gems. We're still thinking about it.

There aren't any future announcements for PS4, apart from the fact you should be able to get your PS3 saves on your PS4

Do you guys have any plans on expending stash space? At this point - no. We're approaching the problem from a different point of view. We want you to use the items a lot more instead of keep the stuff. Salvaging items is a lot more useful now. We want to do a lot of things to make sure you don't keep a lot of gear.

We still need crafting materials. Are we ever going to be able to do anything with whites and greys? White items currently salvage into crafting materials. In the live game you have your normal, nightmare, hell and inferno materials. It's kind of awkward how you change difficulties and suddenly your reagents are no longer needed. We're making it so you use a single set of materials throughout 1 to 60. We want materials to matter but we don't want to make it a chore.

Are the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye going to be coming to the game? During development there were a lot of plans that we explored putting in, but there wasn't a good place for it. The Book of Tyrael and the Book of Cain both explain a bit what's going on with them.

There seem to be new monster affixes, how much more are added? We are adding a few new ones in Reaper of Souls, but we're also looking at normal monster abilities and trying to make them more interesting.

How far along are you? As far as what you see out there. We understand you guys want content, probably on a more regular basis. We're fully committed to get stuff out there.

How about a second expansion? Maybe.

One of my favorite things in D2 was getting a Two-Handed Weapon and getting it in one (Barbarian) Well the Crusader does have a passive that lets him do that.

Will you have Ladder exclusive drop items? Will you provide Beta keys for those that pre-order? We're not talking about Ladder. There's a desire for such, like D2 had, runewords and such. We want to see what's most appealing and design the best experience for that type of play.

We haven't announced pre-orders yet or anything exclusive. You'll have to wait for the announcement, sorry.

Is there going to be a full chat lobby for Clans? Partially, but not exactly. There's a Clan roster window and it has clan chat. We haven't gone back to the Lobby though. When you try this please post your feedback on the forums, we're very open to discussion.

I may or may not have read some datamined information about the Devil's Hand. Elaborate? No. It's cool though!

The banners for the Virtual ticket, you couldn't give us some wings or something a little cooler? Actually Kevin loves the banner, so it's Kevin's fault.

Are current top builds going to be changing, like Archon, CM and others? What about life-steal? We do see life-steal as an issue. It really distorts how you evaluate your items. We want you to make better decisions about if you want more toughness, or healing or damage.

And about the build changes - yes. The new Legendary items will really open up a lot of interesting builds. A lot of builds are unlocked by getting a new Legendary.

Crusader - I felt almost like a glass cannon trying the game. Died a lot, but annihilated everything. I killed Asmodan in a few seconds. Was that your intent or is it going to change? We tend to over-emphisize the offensive abilities on demos, so that you can check them out. The Crusader definitely needs to be tuned, his abilities included.

Have you thought about bonuses for staying alive, like 'congratulations, here's a small buff'? Well, nothing we've worked out yet. You can have a death penalty or you can have a stay-alive bonus. Whenever possible we'd like to give people bonuses, instead of penalizing them. We have a death penalty that works really well right now, but there's really no meaningful stay-alive bonus aside from Nephalem Valor.

I think Wyatt and I have had a few conversations on this topic. We did come up with some ideas. If you guys have any ideas, pass them along. It's something we want to address.

Are there going to be more tying novels? Our creative team is trying to get more novels like that. I can definitely see more coming

Do you know if they're going to be comming out more than every 2 years? If we have a story that we really wanted to tell - yes. At the beginning of Reaper of Souls there was an entire story with Tyrael. That felt like a story that we wanted to tell.

Trifecta stats - what else can we look for besides those 3? I've mentioned before that it's sad that people only care about damage. By removing life-steal we hope people will start looking at increasing their health and armor as well. We don't want to take away trifecta, instead we want to provide you with more options. Instead of just being 3, what if there was 7 or 8 options and now you have to choose, cooldown reduction, skill resource reduction etc.

Bonus damage for skills have changed the gameplay for me, I often change my spec because of that affix.

Currently blue and yellow packs don't differentiate much. Changes for them? We have made some changes to Champion and Rare packs. For Rare instead of having 1 big and several small we could have a skeletal sumoner with 2 skeletal shield-bearers. Champion packs will also have slight changes.

Currently damage comes primarily from the weapon. Why was that done? Are you keeping this system in Reaper of Souls? We're pretty happy with it. In Diablo II for example you might not care about your weapon at all. We had to make some trade-offs, it wasn't an easy decision.

Demonic Essences - will we use them in Reaper of Souls? Don't think we'll be able to answer that today.

Critical Mass is used by 95% of my friends. Is the problem with the passive or with the skills used with it? I think the problem is with the passive itself. We want to make sure the Wizard has good alternatives to it. It feels powerful to perma-CC an enemy, but it's very bad for the general gameplay. Frost Nova is still good, but I don't think we want to be in a place where I can perma-stun enemies all the time.

Will there be something like Hellfire Rings in Reaper of Souls? Yes, but we're not announcing it today.

Why did you split the item properties into categories, will it impact the Mystic? It's nice to have secondary skills, we wanted them to be on the item without the item losing power. It adds valuable depth and choice, especially with the addition of some of the new ones. And yes, with the Mystic you can enchant both Primary and Secondary properties. They're separate in Enchanting though.

Reaper of Souls CE - if you do one can you ensure that there are enough available? We'll certainly try to do that. We don't actually determine that. Retailers tell us how many they want depending on the need.

Are currently well geared characters going to roflstomp through the expansion? No. There's going to be power inflation for sure.

Regarding the art direction for angels as enemies. Are you going to deviate from humans with wings, like in the old Testament? You see many types of demons, but only 1 type of angel. We already have established look for angels. We want to make it interesting, but not go away from that.

The angels closer to Maltael have become corrupted in different ways. Some of the angels you'll see in Pandemonium are starting to look more different than the angels you've seen thus far.

I was wondering if you had plans for releasing Diablo 1's soundtrack? I think it's a good idea, we should talk to people.

Is there any kind of update on PvP arena, or a new follower? A week doesn't go by that someone in the office doesn't ask "What's up with PvP Josh?". The real challenge is finding a PvP mode that does justice to what the core fantasy of Diablo is.

We had a serious talk about adding a new follower, but instead we decided to deepen the followers we currently have. We feel like we didn't do everything we wanted to do with them. So we took the development time and did some things with them.

In Diablo 3 you could go and talk to them in town, hear their back story and all of that, but it was still just a conversation. Now in Reaper of Souls their stories will evolve. So it's not just a back story anymore. You'll have them advance and help them develop as a character.

Blizzard game seem to have a lot of extendability, like mods and UI changes. Is there a way there could be some ingame tools that tell you 'you're going to do this much dps'? One of the difficulties for the audience in general is there's always a conflict between what we want to do as players and what we want to do as designers. I wish the focus wasn't so high on damage. Diablo's an ARPG. I don't think the game's in a good state when everyone's hyper focused on "how much damage did I do?". I think elements like who crowd-controlled the boss or mobility or amplifying damage need to matter more. We're focused on a variety of experiences and wouldn't want to provide more tools for letting people maximizing a number.

I play in Eyefinity and one of the shortcomings are the inventory and character sheets are on the 1st and 3rd screen. Could you make it so I can move it around? Right now we don't have any plans to customize the UI. It's something we will consider down the road though.

Right now every class has a talent or a skill that allows you to convert crit chance into cooldown reduction. Have you tried splitting those? I don't think our responsibility is to make crit worse. Our job is to give you more things that you might want to do instead. Like passives. No plans to directly hit crit head on.

I play Nvidia 3D and when I was playing it the particles are right in my face. Going to the PS4 will you guys implemented 3D capabilities in that? Actually that's a pretty good suggestion. Thanks!

My question is about PvP. I played WoW professionally and a lot of hardcore in Diablo 3. Have you ever considered incorporating PvE elements in a PvP mode so it feels better, but it's not all about the balance? I think adding PvE elements... there's something there. As I keep thinking about it I think it's part of the solution. Maybe it's not PvP, maybe it's PvPvE. Maybe some point in the future we can have an announcement!

Skills where you click and drag, I was wondering how that would work on the PS4? If I remember correctly we had a specific skill with that. The first two required mouse movements, but we removed both of them. The final version's effect has its own AI and moves around the Crusader. So we probably won't have that issue, unless you meant something else?

Well, there are certain skills that require a bit more precision. It's more of a challenge on the console side of things. You're probably going to see solutions similar to what we've done with PS3. Holding the button to increase the distance you Leap for example.

Right now only Cold has an elemental effect. What about the other elements? We haven't worked that out quite yet.

How do you feel about high-level gems dropping? That's something that we talk about. There's some changes that we have to evaluate, particularly with the removal of the AH. If you play through the game self-found you're actually happy to reach some high-level gems.

With Diablo it's very linear story line. Is there any idea of making events be more consequential? Tying random events to things that happen in the world is a cool idea we've tried, but it removes a potential for randomness in the other situation as well. So having those we actually have less random worlds. We've decided we'll try to keep things more self-contained.

I mentioned before going an adventure with your Followers. If you don't go with them - their story doesn't progress. So there's a small choice in there. And we do have a few other things. If you're playing the first set of events and you complete it you'll be able to get to a second set of events, which builds on the first. If you don't do the first event when it rolls the next time you play you're back in the poll of having the first event roll again.

1:27PM It will be possible to view enemy hero builds, and much more, on a strategic map.

1:24PM The main message here is that they can build just about anything. There will also be a map editor in game at some point.

1:22PM You earn gold in game, and can pay to buy things like heroes and skins, there's also unlock progression, but no pay to win.

1:21PM Tons of questions about this hero or that hero and so on... loads of potential

1:18PM Fifteen to twenty minute games, that's the goal, and they are committed to making it real. Lane pushing power comes from captures and characters, which also creates a ton of balance tools. However, games will end organically, not cut off. You level very fast in heroes, too.

1:16PM All manner of maps are on the menu different modes and the like, because if how the engine is built on StarCraft

1:15PM Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft are all on the menu

1:14PM Items are gone, replaced by talents. Faster paced games and battlefield decisions as opposed to going back to base to shop

1:13PM Question time! Rock and roll racers and lost Vikings will be skins.

1:09PM Mounts can be used to customize your hero beyond skins. My Little Pony mount is hilarious and I want it! They also allow faster movement across the map.

1:08PM mode where you and your party can reserve your heroes before the game so others can't steal them. You'll be rewarded for playing with people, the out-of-game XP gains will be greater if you play with a group.

1:07PM 5v5 team game, so playing with friends is great for strategy

1:06PM Tyrael fire chains deal damage as a clothes line stretched between two players. So cool!

1:05PM These abilities are insanely cool, giant shadows of spaceships flying around killing things, for example

1:03PM Key heroes such as Raynor fulfil the easy to learn hard to master philosophy, while others are just plain hard!

1:01PM Talents allow you to customize your play style, and force your opponents to adapt

1:00PM You can choose your ultimate ability, as well as augmenting your basic, core abilities.

1:00PM Looking at Stitches, Stitches has hook, and a way to eat people.

12:59PM The models for heroes are amazing

12:56PM Hero design is a huge deal, the designers are asking 'what is the fantasy'for players playing the heroes?

12:54PM Absolutely love the tactical side of this game, but have some concerns about PuG groups

12:53PM One skulls are collected, the Grave Golem spawns in your base. The more skulls you get, the stronger your Grave Golem is.

12:51PM Haunted Mines requires you to decide how many team members go down to gather items and win the Grave Golem in the mine, and how many stay up to focus objectives.

12:49PM Tributes captures have to channelled, so team play is required around the area.

Duncan Jones has played the Warcraft games, World of Warcraft, and even Lost Vikings. He originally played Ultima Online.

The Special Effects supervisor plays World of Warcraft and is level 90.

Marketing hasn't started yet, so there isn't a ton to reveal yet.

Jones liked the script, but it was very Alliance centric. He thought it would be better to make it about both sides and the original Warcraft.

Jones turned down other films because he was really passionate about working on Warcraft.

While working on Golden Compass, the special effects supervisor got up at 2 in the morning to do runs with his guild.

Real actors will be used for the Orcs.

Avatar meets Game of Thrones as far as complexity of visual effects with live action, advanced special effects, and motion capture on set.

There is a lot of Warcraft lore, so they had to pick a certain amount of the lore for this movie.

The team has to figure out which characters to shine the spotlight on.

There is concept art for Draenor, Dalaran, Ironforge, Stormwind

Making environments for the game has a lot of restrictions, but in the movie you can expand on the environment with less restriction and make it more grand / cinematic.

Many locations in the film will be on built sets, like the Lion's Pride Inn.

The most famous character in World of Warcraft is the actual world itself.

Wardrobe and Costume design is being done by someone that has worked on Avatar.

The team is looking at details as small as the bark on the trees in Elwynn Forest.

People who don't know the world and people who are hardcore players will both enjoy the film.

The story is Orcs vs Humans. Lothar and Durotan.

Durotan represents the highest ideal of the Orcs. He believes in his people and his future.

Both want to do the right thing for their people.

The games weren't the best way to tell this story originally, so the movie will be a great opportunity to tell the story in an even more epic way.

Someone has to win and someone has to lose, but everyone loses at least a little bit.

The style of this war movie will be similar to Gladiator, gritty.

WoW doesn't have scabbards, so where swords will go has to be worked out.

There are no plans for an art book for the movie, but it is a possibility.

Lots of the cast has been picked out.

The first movie has to be done right, then they can think about doing more.

The majority of the movie takes place in the Eastern Kingdoms.

The lore of this time doesn't have many female characters, but the producers are pushing for including some female characters.

We will see a preview sometime next year, maybe at Blizzcon.

Metzen would like to do a TV series one day. When they originally decided to do a movie, Game of Thrones didn't exist on TV yet, so most similar stories were told in movies. If everything goes well, maybe a studio will want to do a TV show.

The Lord of the Rings movies inspired Jones to want to do this movie. He wants to match or beat them at making an awesome movie.

Someone is working on the Orcish language for the movie.

The movie will be PG13, but the PG13 rating is shifting. Batman movies are PG13.

The Blackrock Foundry will be the second raid available at release. It is the center of the Iron Horde and has 10 bosses in three wings, with a non linear layout.

The feel of looking down in BRD or UBRS and seeing more of the area was nice.

You will still be able to raid with similar flexibility in boss order as Flex has now.

The new Normal will be as difficult as Flex is today.

The new Heroic will be as difficult as Normal is today.

The new Mythic will be as difficult was Heroic is today.

All levels of difficulty except for Mythic will be cross realm on release.

Each raid difficulty has its own lockout. They will be loot based lockouts, allowing you to kill the same boss multiple times per week and only get loot once a week.

There is no more dynamic difficulty switching in raids. Now you have Mythic trash and Mythic trash loot.

Raid Finder will be the only kind of raid you queue for now. Normal (current Flex) will require you to zone in.

Loot will scale based on the number of players, giving you a higher chance for another piece of loot the more players you have. This ensures there are no optimal breakpoints that would limit raid size to get more loot.

Right now boss abilities still have some breakpoints. Going from 14 to 15 adds a third target for a certain mechanic in SoO right now, but in the future it would have a scaling random chance to have a third target so that there isn't that breakpoint.

Quests

Quest chains that are important and have important lore and story will be indicated with an icon.

There will be more optional content and less quest hubs that have to be unlocked by another chain first.

The dynamic events from Timeless Isle will appear in the world when you are leveling and Level 100. Right now they are mostly soloable rare spawns, but the WoD events will be more complex and not soloable.

Treasures will be hidden down paths that quests don't send you down and found frequently. They also will have a small amount of story to go with them.

Quests will have a chance to give you rare or epic rewards.

The quest UI has been updated to combine the map and quest log and help guide the quest experience better.

The map will show you where you left off on the important storyline quests.

The world will be more dynamic and less predictable.

Level 100 Content

There will be few or no daily quests at level 100!

There will be more max level content than ever before.

People really liked the Patch 5.1 daily quest story line, as well as the Timeless Isle reward system. These will be combined to create big zones with long progressive story lines that are more free form.

There will be some environmental gameplay, similar to Troves. It gives you an opportunity to use your class skills that are normally not used to earn rewards.

Garrisons

When you build your Garrison, you will get a few starting buildings.

The Town Hall is your main point of interaction and is automatically placed.

All profession buildings are in the Small Buildings category. They will allow you to use an engineer follower to run missions to get engineering recipes and items.

The pet stable will have a trainer you can fight.

Large buildings are something you would expect to see in a WC3 base. Each building has a bonus. For example, the barracks will let you have more followers.

Buildings start out small and are upgraded over time.

Some upgrades can be purchased, but some are blueprints that you find in the world. They can be faction rewards, quest rewards, random world drops, or found in other ways.

Specializations allow you to customize a max level building. They can be changed once each day and may have a cost. You pick from one of three specializations.

Some buildings will allow you to assign followers to them. If you find a miner follower, he can work while you are offline collecting ore.

Managing your followers will be an important part of garrisons.

Fill plots to upgrade your tier. Plots come in multiple sizes.

Followers can be sent on Quests, Scenarios, Dungeons, or Raids. Raids may take party of a week and many followers.

You put the followers into a party and send them on missions. You get a bonus if you match traits on your followers to the missions.

When you send your follower somewhere in your Garrison, you will see the follower there.

Systems

World of Warcraft is a game you play with friends. WoD will remove barriers that stop you from playing with friends and encourage you to make new friends.

Random matchmaking is going to feel like a last resort.

Raid Finder is there to let you see the content and story, almost like a Tourist mode.

Group Finder will work cross realm and work for many different types of groups. Shadowmorune, RBGs, Raids and more!

Stacking the Deck will give you bonus Valor for queuing with friends or queuing again with the same random matchmade group. (~10% bonus Valor)

Leveling

Leveling doesn't feel as exciting as it used to, so WoD will try to address that.

From level 91 to 100 you will get upgrades to your core spells. Some will be slight class changes, some will be passive bonuses, similar to old spell ranks. Some of the boosts will definitely be easy to feel.

See the slides for examples of leveling rewards!

Itemization

Getting new items should be exciting. Right now it feels like you have to do a lot of work when you get a new item.

Hit and Expertise don't feel like a bonus, so they are now gone!

Dodge and Parry, gone!

Reforging, gone!

Enchanting is still around, but fewer items can be enchanted. There will be more enchant choices for those items.

The number of items with gem sockets will be gone. Only one gem slot per item. Gems are more powerful. Sockets are a bonus that don't count towards item level budget. No more socket bonuses or meta gems.

The stats on armor will now change based on your spec. Plate drops and it will have whatever stats your class needs, no more Intellect plate! No more PvP Priest Healing set and PvP Priest DPS set, just a Priest set.

Jewelery, cloak, trinkets, and weapons will be more role focused and might keep stats.

Armor will become a good tanking stat again, Spirit will be good for healers.

Tertiary stats are bonus stats that can appear on gear that don't count towards the item level budget. Lifesteal, avoidance, sturdiness, movement speed (stacks with other bonuses), cleave, and more.

Item squish is in! All of the big jumps from old expansions and raid tiers will be flattened.

Your relative power won't change, just the numbers. The speed at which you kill things won't change. You can still solo old content.

Q&A

The transition to 20 player Mythic raiding will be difficult, but it will be good for tuning and the game as a whole.

Scaling raids to 30 is a possibility, but isn't planned right now.

Scaling player level is being worked on still. When the team comes up with a good way to scale and reward old content there will be more to talk about.

Followers do content that is unique to Garrisons, not anything that players can do.